Wednesday, December 01, 2004

The Wrath of the Jews: "Before 1967, it didn’t fit into American strategic interests to talk about Jews or their history of oppression, particularly in the same sentence as the word “justice.” After 1967, when Israel defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, and conquered the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Sinai and the Golan Heights, the US government decided that Israel could serve as a surrogate for US interests in the Middle East. 1967 was the year when the US discovered Israel, and it was the year when the Holocaust was “remembered.” The discovery of Israel happened as selectively as the remembering of the Holocaust. The US discovered Israel as a military ally, not as a country with ordinary people, and so US aid to Israel reflected that. Most US aid to Israel, including economic aid, has been spent for expenses related to purchasing military equipment from the US. In order to justify that strategic relationship in moral terms, a new history of the Holocaust was “remembered.”"

This article suggests one of the great untold scandals of the 20th Century: that the Holocaust could only be bothered to be remembered if Israel could be a useful client of a major power.

As Israel Shahak has pointed out, it all has a terribly grim echo of the past in Eastern Europe. So long as the Jews were useful to the Tsar, they could be so used and rewarded, but what would the Tsar really care if grassroots rage led to pogroms? And even more sinisterly, what if, amongst and embittered and traumatised population, grassroots rage could be systematically exploited by cynical and ruthless politicians? One would like to think such a horror could not be replicated, but what folly is it to risk the same or something similar.

The Wrath of the Jews: "Before 1967, it didn’t fit into American strategic interests to talk about Jews or their history of oppression, particularly in the same sentence as the word “justice.” After 1967, when Israel defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, and conquered the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Sinai and the Golan Heights, the US government decided that Israel could serve as a surrogate for US interests in the Middle East. 1967 was the year when the US discovered Israel, and it was the year when the Holocaust was “remembered.” The discovery of Israel happened as selectively as the remembering of the Holocaust. The US discovered Israel as a military ally, not as a country with ordinary people, and so US aid to Israel reflected that. Most US aid to Israel, including economic aid, has been spent for expenses related to purchasing military equipment from the US. In order to justify that strategic relationship in moral terms, a new history of the Holocaust was “remembered.”"

This article suggests one of the great untold scandals of the 20th Century: that the Holocaust could only be bothered to be remembered if Israel could be a useful client of a major power.

As Israel Shahak has pointed out, it all has a terribly grim echo of the past in Eastern Europe. So long as the Jews were useful to the Tsar, they could be so used and rewarded, but what would the Tsar really care if grassroots rage led to pogroms? And even more sinisterly, what if, amongst and embittered and traumatised population, grassroots rage could be systematically exploited by cynical and ruthless politicians? One would like to think such a horror could not be replicated, but what folly is it to risk the same or something similar.